Choices And Consequences | Bitsplitting.org:
Many developers cling tightly to the belief that because positive reviews can lead to increased sales, it’s unambiguously right to encourage more of them. And if producing a small number of reviews is a good thing, then producing a huge number of reviews must be a great thing. Mo’ reviews, mo’ money. What’s the problem?
John Gruber started a kerfluffle by not-quite calling for users to respond to “Hey, review my app!” requests with a one star review if a user felt the request was inappropriate or badly timed.
The fact is, word of mouth is a key aspect of marketing for apps, and that average rating number is huge in a person’s decision whether or not to put money down on an app. Another sad fact is that every damned app store (including Apple’s, and the one I dealt with at Palm on WebOS) do this really badly. Really, Really badly. (I could write many, many blog posts about how screwed up all this is.. [[twitch]])
So there’s a really strong incentive for developers to encourage users to post reviews. Unfortunately, many apps do this badly, and some do it really, really badly.
So I sympathize with the app developers, because any call to dump 1star reviews on you is gonna hurt you in the marketplace. And “in theory”, that review ought to be about the app itself to be really useful for consumers to judge whether or not to buy it. And the biggest complaint I got at Palm was that so many of the reviews were about things other than the App (especially App store problems caused by Palm and other things outside of the control of the developer). I spent many, many hours cleaning up reviews dealing with system problems, since we agreed that reviews should be about the app and not the infrastructure.
That said, I think Gruber is right, and I’m adopting his idea. Under certain circumstances: when the app becomes annoying about requesting reviews, I’m going to dump a 1 star review on it. Period.
I have multiple apps on my devices today that do this: I’m doing something, and up pops a dialog: Hey! like this app! review it!
These apps give me two choices! “Sure!” and “Not now!”. What’s missing? “No”. They’re fighting a war of wearing me out, hoping that eventually I’ll leave the damned review just to make them shut up. They’ve left off the “No” option, as in “no, I do not want to leave a review for you”.
ANY app that does that deserves a 1 star review for being annoying. I do not mind if an app solicits a review. I get it. I know the game.
But any app that refuses to take no for an answer is stepping over the line. If I can’t say “no” and get you to stop asking, the second time you ask for a review, you’re going to get one. And you won’t like it.
It’s up to the app developers. Ask nicely, and learn to take no for an answer. Or risk getting an answer you won’t like. Any app that annoys me about reviews is going to get a 1star review complaining about the way they ask for reviews.
App developers: don’t like that? Fix how you ask for things, and stop trying to force your users into shilling for you when they aren’t interested in doing so. Ask nicely, but then shut up.